Scientists use deep-sea robots to discover huge lava fields around an active volcano

More than two kilometres beneath the surface of the Pacific, off the coast of Oregon, an active underwater volcano has been hiding one of the strangest landscapes ever mapped on the seafloor. Using robotic vehicles capable of withstanding crushing depths, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have spent more than two decades surveying Axial Seamount, a volcano along the Juan de Fuca Ridge that has erupted repeatedly since its discovery in the 1980s. According to the study published in Advancing Earth and Space Sciences, titled ‘Voluminous Inflated Lobate Flows on the Distal Rift Zones of Axial Seamount, Juan de Fuca Spreading Ridge’, three enormous lava flow fields on the volcano's distant flanks, each far larger than anything previously recorded at Axial or elsewhere on the global mid-ocean ridge system. These flows formed as molten rock pooled beneath a hardened crust, swelled to extraordinary thickness, and eventually burst outward, reshaping the ocean floor and offering fresh clues about the volcano's history of caldera collapse.How did MBARI’s deep-sea robots map Axial SeamountFor more than twenty years, teams from MBARI's Seafloor Mapping Lab and Submar...